Profound Lore HHV Records 62 Items

On their sophomore album Preserved in Torment, Olympia WA’s doomed death metal unit Mortiferum push their penchant for dark, depraved, and disgusting dirges even further out into the periphery. Picking up where they left off with their Profound Lore debut Disgorged from Psychotic Depths, Mortiferum continue to mine the poisonous quagmire of classic American death metal, the warped visions of Finnish death metal, and the suffocating lurch of funeral doom for inspiration, but the resulting six tracks on Preserved in Torment operate on a larger scale, both in musical scope and in sheer crushing weight.

Recorded over the span of twelve days at Soundhouse in Seattle WA with Andrew Oswald at the engineering/mixing helm, Preserved in Torment finds Mortiferum expanding on the ominous atmospherics of their past work while simultaneously pushing and refining their work into even more vile and oppressive sonic territories. From the moment the album opens with “Eternal Procession,” the listener is laid to waste with the band’s monolithic siege, with impossibly heavy riffs and relentless mid-tempo drum barrages creating the aural equivalent of being trampled beneath the hooves of some unstoppable army. Mortiferum don’t shy away from long-form songwriting on Preserved in Torment, yet the band doesn’t waste a note in crafting their epic assaults. The eight-minute opus “Incubus of Bloodstained Visions” harnesses all of the band’s cataclysmic impulses even as they display an increased capacity for wretched harmonies, dynamic tempo shifts, and nimble fretwork, resulting in a composition that taps into prog rock ambitions without succumbing to the clinical perfectionism of progressive death metal virtuosos. They reassert their integrated devotion to both putrid riffs and foul melodicism on “Caudex of Flesh,” where troglodyte death metal impulses merge with the chasmic doom of classic Cathedral.

With guitarist/vocalist Max Bowman and guitarist Chase Slaker having cut their teeth in the death/grind outfit Bone Sickness and drummer Alex Mody having played in funeral doom group Ēōs, it only follows that Mortiferum would find a way to fuse their musical roots into a cohesive hybrid of grotesque savagery and glacial mass. While some credit must be paid to pioneers like Rippikoulu and Disembowelment, the band sees their sound as less indebted to past attempts at crosspollinating these disparate approaches and more as a result of organic gut-level intuition and a natural inclination towards musical experimentation. In a nod to the Pacific Northwest’s esteemed history of low-tuned slow-hand sludge, bassist Tony Wolfe further expands the group’s sound with thick slabs of gut-churning distorted bass. Paired with the continued cover art painting by Chase Slaker, Mortiferum create an all-encompassing sense of dread and morbidity that is distinctly their own.

Feral Season is Karl Cordtz and Patrick Hills. All songs and lyrics were written by Cordtz in isolation during the Summer and Fall of 2020. Drums and synth were added by Hills. “Rotting Body In The Range Of Light”, Feral Season’s debut full-length LP was recorded following winter at Earthtone Recording Company in Sacramento California.

The influence of early to mid Scandinavian black metal forms the bands sonic backbone, though their songs often wander into more hallucinatory soundscapes. The project initially began as a way for Cordtz to explore a personal connection between black metal and the landscapes of Northern California. “Rotting Body in the Range of Light” is a portrayal of the loss of one's mind and a subsequent flight into the depths of the inner self.

Animate the Emptiness is the debut full length by the NYC metal duo Luminous Vault. On their long awaited follow-up to 2017’s Charismata EP, guitarist/vocalist Mario Diaz de Leon (Oneirogen, Bloodmist) and bassist/vocalist Samuel Smith (Artificial Brain, Aeviterne) present a bold and unique hybrid of black/death metal and electronic music.

From their inception in 2015, Luminous Vault have combined the “machine rhythm” approach of pioneering bands Godflesh and Blut Aus Nord with black metal and synthesizers. On Animate the Emptiness, this vibrant fusion is expressed with an intensity surpassing that of the band’s past efforts. Tracks such as Incarnate Flame Arise are pervaded by the slow, speaker-rattling thud of an electronic kick drum, punctuated by Smith’s distorted bassline and synthetic hi-hat patterns, while Diaz de Leon’s guitar intones haunting tremolo-picked melodies and feedback-laden squalls. On closing track Ancient North, melancholic doom metal harmonies sustain over syncopated bass and drum rhythms, giving way to a euphoric surge of major key tremolo riffs. Diaz de Leon and Smith’s vocal lines alternately evoke apocalyptic sermons and a call from otherwordly depths, with surrealistic lyrics that draw inspiration from psychospiritual trials and transformations, full of alchemical imagery.

BOG Body’s looming form has thawed from the dregs of sordid earth to reveal their debut full length album “Cryonic Crevasse Cult” on May 20th, 2022 on CD/LP/Digital via Profound Lore Records.

Following in the footsteps of their 2018 demo “Through the Burial Bog” and 2020’s MLP “The Gate of Grief,” BOG Body has transcended the cultic guts of black metal’s early forefathers with a subsonic war doom incursion for their debut album that’s as much a dirge as it is pandemonic fervor, traversing beyond the seracs and into the crevasses of black death.

New York’s Pop. 1280 was formed in 2008 by Chris Bug and Ivan Drip, with the vision of rebelling against the music of the day and making their own soundtrack for the end times. Initially a noise rock outfit, the band has released five LPs and numerous singles integrating diverse influences of industrial, EBM, techno, and post-punk into their signature sound. In 2018, Matthew Hord joined Chris and Ivan, and this new trio embarked on a collaborative journey that saw the band shed their rock roots and turn their focus toward sequencers, drum machines, samplers, and synthesizers. This exciting outpouring of creativity produced 2019’s "Way Station" LP.

Now, Pop. 1280 present their 2021 album, "Museum on the Horizon", an industrial opus that epitomizes Pop. 1280’s drive to push themselves into new artistic territories, and to inspire each other to be bold and hold nothing back. Recorded, mixed and co-produced with Jonathan Schenke in Brooklyn, NY, Museum on the Horizon finds Pop. 1280 at the height of their powers on a thrill ride of industrial bangers.

New York’s Pop. 1280 was formed in 2008 by Chris Bug and Ivan Drip, with the vision of rebelling against the music of the day and making their own soundtrack for the end times. Initially a noise rock outfit, the band has released five LPs and numerous singles integrating diverse influences of industrial, EBM, techno, and post-punk into their signature sound. In 2018, Matthew Hord joined Chris and Ivan, and this new trio embarked on a collaborative journey that saw the band shed their rock roots and turn their focus toward sequencers, drum machines, samplers, and synthesizers. This exciting outpouring of creativity produced 2019’s "Way Station" LP.

Now, Pop. 1280 present their 2021 album, "Museum on the Horizon", an industrial opus that epitomizes Pop. 1280’s drive to push themselves into new artistic territories, and to inspire each other to be bold and hold nothing back. Recorded, mixed and co-produced with Jonathan Schenke in Brooklyn, NY, Museum on the Horizon finds Pop. 1280 at the height of their powers on a thrill ride of industrial bangers.

The new album from death metal outfit OF FEATHER AND BONE, “Sulfuric Disintegration” (out on CD/LP/Digital Nov 13), sees the Colorado power-trio deliver their most brutal, dynamic, and punishing album to date. Following up 2018’s “Bestial Hymns Of Perversion”, an album which signaled a new paradigm shift for the band and saw the band get the worthwhile recognition deserved through acclaim and notable touring cycles (the band being recognized for their devastating live performance), bringing a new sense of awareness to the band. “Sulfuric Disintegration” takes OF FEATHER AND BONE’s intensity and aura to the next level.

With not only delivering a more dynamic and complex musical vision that balances the genres of pure dark death metal, blistering grind, and unrelenting bestial metal, “Sulfuric Disintegration” sees OF FEATHER AND BONE become the full-on sonic killing machine that one was given a mere glimpse of with their past works. Not only is the sound on “Sulfuric Disintegration” more devastating than anything done previously, but the tighter and warmer production courtesy of a lethal mix and master executed by Arthur Rizk (tracking was done at Juggernaut Audio by Ben Romsdahl) gives the band their deadliest sounding album yet.

After years of ruminant toil, Sanguine Eagle unveil its twin debut full lengths, Storm Mysticism and Shores Of Avarice. This band is black metal in its purest essence: trendless, unyielding, and played with absolute conviction. The compositions are marked as much by resolute and stoic patience as by staggering violence, never pandering to the weakminded and eschewing any shred of the puerile amusement rife in a genre so pilfered by dilettantes.
Both works were recorded during the same winter and serve as two distinct yet complimentary chapters in the tenebrous unfolding that is Sanguine Eagle. Storm Mysticism was written initially and serves as a declaration of intent, displaying the sprawling ambience and storming black metal that defines their craft, as well as establishing the band’s conceptual path. Shores Of Avarice reveals the band taking their discipline to new, even more rapturous heights. An unfaltering and misanthropic vision emblazoned upon the seat of supreme intelligence, pushing their black metal even further into the realm of the ecstatic and ancestral.

Seattle, Washington’s Hissing engage in dark, dissonant, cacophonous, inverted death metal noise and with their debut album, Permanent Destitution, the three-piece have created a nihilistic vision of deranged otherworldly audial pandemonium. A soundscape of pure enveloping darkness and unrelenting chaos, it deconstructs and builds itself through walls and layers of pummeling turmoil and disarray generated through twisted, angular guitar work and fretboard annihilation, surgically cold and calculated death march drums and monolithic bass, all with a dark overbearing ambience. The added touch of droning noise segments, also crucial to the band’s sound, mixed with the doomy industrial components, become that final element to make this release a towering monument of primal avant-deathnoise.

Sulphur Soul, the latest offering from Canadian black metal unit Gevurah, continues and builds upon the promise laid down with their 2016 debut album Hallelujah!, one of that year’s most recognized albums within the scene. With this album, the band continues to explore their more aggressive and punishing aspects while conjuring even more complex and challenging realms. The four hymns that encompass these thirty-two minutes present some of the band’s most intense and uncompromising material yet and shows how the Montreal-based duo encircle their sonic palette with a new heightened sense of brutality and atmosphere, all the while upholding their trademark dark essence and transcendental spiritual aura.

Vacivus is one of the UK’s most promising new death metal bands, following two recent EPs, Rite Of Ascension and the Nuclear Chaos 7-inch, and consistently bludgeoning the scene with their live shows. They play dark brutal metal influenced by classic old school U.S. bands, but still find their place within today’s echelon, exemplified by bands such as Dead Congregation, Blood Incantation, Grave Miasma, Cruciamentum, Phrenelith etc.

The new full-length Temple Of The Abyss shows immense musical growth since the band’s initial inception in 2013. It captures the essential elements: the unrelenting brutality, a dark brooding atmosphere, infectious riffs and guitar shredding—all with a backbone laid down by a solid rhythm section, making it a death metal wonder to behold.

Maryland / Pennsylvania experimental death-noise band Full Of Hell have embarked on quite the journey leading up to the their latest full-length album Trumpeting Ecstasy, their most punishing, virulent, and dynamic work to date.

The embryonic beginnings of Full of Hell displayed their palette at its most primitive: d-beat and blast-ridden hardcore punk, with spats of noise and caustic rhythm. After the release of their Profound Lore Records debut Full Of Hell & Merzbow in late 2014, their third full-length album, the band began to truly come into their own, combining elements of their previous sound with grindcore, death / black metal, sonically laden power electronics and industrial pounding. The band followed this up with a direct collaboration album with The Body and several EPs, one of them being their most-recent split 7-inch with Nails (which debuted on #2 on the Billboard Top 100 Singles Chart).

The band builds upon their Merzbow collaboration and the releases succeeding it with this latest—going into God City Studios with Kurt Ballou at the production helm, the result is their best and strongest. Sky tearing and sonically cataclysmic, this aural deluge also features guest appearances by Aaron Turner (Sumac / Old Man Gloom / Mamiffer / Isis), Nate Newton (Converge / Old Man Gloom), Andrew Nolan (Column Of Heaven / The Endless Blockade), and Canadian singer/songwriter Nicole Dollanganger.

Conceived in New Jersey’s then-emerging DIY scene of the late 1990s, cult hip-hop act Dälek pioneered an intriguing fusion of progressive lyrical prowess and sonic experimentation. With unique dark ambient / rhythmic noise elements, the trio was described as a mix of Public Enemy and My Bloody Valentine. Their singular sound was documented on four milestone albums released on Mike Patton’s Ipecac Recordings imprint, alongside live actions supporting the likes of Tool and Melvins and collaborative works with artists such as Faust, before the group ceased regular activities in 2011.

In the spring of 2015, mastermind MC Dälek (a.k.a. Will Brooks) revived the project with the blessing of ex-member / co-producer Oktopus. Featuring new members DJ rEk and Mike Swarmbots, Dälek presents their newest release and first proper full-length since 2009’s Gutter Tactics.

A formidable display of true hip hop artistry, Asphalt for Eden is a creative peak for the forward-thinking trio and will generate renewed interest in their iconoclastic sound.